It has become increasingly more common to find a photobooth at social events such as weddings, formal parties, and sporting events. Attendees at such events enjoy the ability to use a publically available camera to take photographs that they can later share with their family and friends to commemorate the social occasion.
However, traditional photobooths are often too large and heavy to be easily transported to the site of such events, rendering the use of these types of photobooths exceedingly expensive and inconvenient. As a result, the current trend is to use a photobooth that is designed to be lightweight and collapsible to facilitate simplified transport of the photobooth from one site location to another. Additionally, photobooths have also been transitioning from film based photography to digital photography in line with current trends. The use of digital photography requires that the portable photobooth also be equipped with suitable hardware for taking and storing digital photographs taken through use of the photobooth.
Portable photobooths have therefore been adapted to use small, lightweight hardware devices such as commercially available smart devices for the taking and storing of such photographs. Such smart devices may include tablets having a touch-screen interface and a built-in camera feature, such as the Apple iPad® tablet, for example. Attendees of social events having a portable photobooth may find the use of such popular and well-known smart devices to be advantageous due to their familiarity and ease of use. Such smart devices also commonly include the ability to network with other devices wirelessly, which in turn facilitates the ability of the smart device to share any photographs taken via the photobooth with any compatible social networking services or even other smart devices present at the social event.
One potential problem associated with the use of portable photobooth systems utilizing a smart device may be the increased threat of the smart device being interfered with, damaged, or stolen due to its small size and portability. To prevent the stealing of such equipment, it may be necessary to secure the smart device in a manner that allows the smart device to be accessible while also being difficult to separate from the remainder of the portable photobooth system.
It would therefore be advantageous to provide a mounting device that would allow a smart device such as a tablet to be mounted to a portable photobooth in a manner that prevents the theft of both the smart device and the mounting device when attached to the portable photobooth.